But Monsanto won't be able to sue over "incidental infringement" of GMO crops.

Agribusiness giant Monsanto was in the news this year for taking a patent case to the Supreme Court. Now it has racked up another patent win in the higher courts, but the win has come at a price.

In the Supreme Court case earlier this year, farmer Vernon Bowman was trying to create a second crop of genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans without Monsanto's permission. In the federal appeal case decided yesterday, Organic Seed Growers v. Monsanto, a group of farmers banded together with a wholly different concern. They didn't want another generation of GMO crops for "free"; they wanted the opposite. These farmers want to keep their fields entirely clear of transgenic seeds.

This is an increasingly difficult task, since Monsanto's patented crops have come to dominate some parts of the food supply. The organic farmers estimate that 85 to 90 percent of US-grown soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and canola contain Monsanto patented genes. The farmers in this case don't want to be anywhere near the "free ride" Bowman was accused of seeking; rather, they're concerned about "contamination." The Roundup Ready trait makes soybeans resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, but it isn't valuable to them. These farmers oppose the use of glyphosate altogether.

Paradoxically, this position brought the organic farmers to the same place Bowman found himself: in court, contesting Monsanto's patents. With the help of the Public Patent Foundation, the organic farmers filed suit in 2011, arguing that 23 Monsanto patents related to the company's key transgenic crops were invalid and not infringed. Even as they shunned Monsanto products, these organic farmers were being damaged, their lawyers argued, because they were forced to "forgo growing [conventional] corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets, soybeans, and alfalfa, since it is widely known that those crops are currently under severe threat of transgenic seed contamination."

The farmers were forced to take "costly precautions" to avoid such contamination. They had seeds tested and created "buffer" zones between their farms and their neighbors to avoid patented seeds blowing into fields. Just the fear of an expensive patent lawsuit brought by Monsanto altered their farming. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto brought 144 infringement lawsuits and settled another 700 cases without litigation.

"At least one appellant declared that the fear of suit by Monsanto is the sole reason he refrained from cultivating organic corn and soybeans," noted the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled in favor of Monsanto yesterday.

Promise you won’t sue us

To that end, the farmers went to Monsanto in 2011 asking the company to waive any claim for patent infringement against them, in a written "covenant not to sue." Monsanto wasn't going to sign any such document. The company referred them to a statement on its website, which read:

It has never been, nor will it be Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.

Monsanto's lawyer assured them that the company "does not assert and has no intention of asserting patent-infringement claims against your clients."

The organic farmers, unsatisfied, went to court anyway. Monsanto's history of "ruthless enforcement" gave them reason to be worried. The company investigated as many as 500 farmers each year, trespassing on to their land, they alleged. And the company's hundreds of legal actions over patented crops spoke for itself. They wanted a judge's order saying they don't infringe.

But the district court wouldn't hear the case, ruling that because of Monsanto's position there was no controversy that a judge could resolve.

On Monday, the appeals court agreed with the district court. But it did so while making clear that Monsanto would be legally bound by its promise to not sue over "incidental infringement" if transgenic seed or pollen blows onto a grower's land. "Taken together, Monsanto's representations unequivocally disclaim any intent to sue," the three-judge appeals panel held. The effect is similar to the "covenant not to sue" that the farmers originally sought.

When pressed about farmers who had greater than "trace amounts," Monsanto's lawyer hedged during oral arguments. Still, "Monsanto's binding representations remove any risk of suit against the appellants as users or sellers of trace amounts (less than one percent) of modified seed," the judges held.

The Supreme Court case didn't resolve this issue, since the high court "carefully distinguished Bowman's use of the patented soybean seeds from the situation of inadvertent infringement," the Federal Circuit judges noted.

The organic farmers who filed the case reacted to yesterday's ruling as a "partial victory."

"Even though we’re disappointed with the Court's ruling not to hear our case, we’re encouraged by the court’s determination that Monsanto does not have the right to sue farmers for trace contamination," Maine farmer Jim Gerritsen, president of lead plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, said in a statement. "However, the farmers went to court seeking justice not only about contamination, but also the larger question of the validity of Monsanto’s patents. Justice has not been served."

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms. "[T]he decision today allows farmers who are contaminated to sue Monsanto and Monsanto's customers for the harm caused by that contamination without fear of a retaliation patent infringement claim against them by Monsanto," stated the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat).

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The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

What you probably don't realize is that getting certified as an organic farmer is both time consuming and expensive. If they were to be contaminated by the monsanto GMO crap ... crop then they would not only lose their certification, severely devaluating their crops, they'd also have to go through the certification process again which can take years.

Hmmm...Should there be a burden on GMO splicers to provide safeguards against spreading of their genes? Or at least some kind of marker to simplify the sorting out of GMO seedstock?

These types of patents simply should not be allowed in the first place. No company should be able to own or claim ownership to any genetic material.

Sooooooo wrong. No company or individual should be able to patent a naturally existing gene simply by being the first to discover and characterize the gene, sure! But when millions or billions of dollars are put into engineering a protein/enzyme into a form that meets an industrial need, there is no question that the new gene should be and is patentable.

Outside the realm of GMO, many chemical and pharmaceutical companies routinely apply a technique called "directed evolution" to enhance or change certain properties of enzymes derived from microbes, and then use the resulting 'super enzymes' to catalyze reactions in their industrial processes that are either impossible to do with traditional routes, or require huge amounts of dangerous, toxic solvents. If you couldn't patent novel genes, like Monsanto has done here, then we'd be unable to make many products or would hurt the environment by being forced to use these toxic solvents.

EDIT: apparently a bunch of you don't know how to read, or just automatically downvote any post that seems to be defending Monsanto (and I'm not, in this instance). My defense of gene patents here has nothing to do with this particular Monsanto case or the spreadability of their patented genes via pollination. I'm merely asserting, as a knowledgeable engineer who originally worked in protein engineering and directed evolution before switching PhD advisors, that dm00's position that no genes should be patentable is completely ridiculous. It fails to recognize the realities of industrial, medical and academic research. No one should be able to patent a naturally existing gene simply because they were the first to find the DNA sequence and characterize the activity or role in disease; however, if a researcher or company intentionally modifies a gene to improve or alter activity for industrial or medical purposes there's absolutely no doubt that it is patentable and SHOULD be patentable. Now, how those patents are asserted and defended, and issues of fair use, are issues for the courts to decide.

It has never been, nor will it be Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.

Well, if Monsanto said it, it's good enough for me!

Quote:

But Monsanto won't be able to sue over "incidental infringement" of GMO crops.

Won't be able to sue? Or shouldn't be able to win? That's a big distinction. The point of a legal harassment strategy is to disrupt and/or bankrupt a smaller, more vulnerable business, and in the pursuit of that even court loss may not be defeat.

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

What you probably don't realize is that getting certified as an organic farmer is both time consuming and expensive. If they were to be contaminated by the monsanto GMO crap ... crop then they would not only lose their certification, severely devaluating their crops, they'd also have to go through the certification process again which can take years.

As well as a massively expensive lawsuit against a giant corporation with a very experienced legal staff.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their fields. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their fields?

How in the hell does that make sense?

It's the responsibility of the people raising or creating GMO crops to make sure they aren't harming others. It isn't the responsibility of someone minding their own business raising organic crops to make sure their business (which relies on not having GMO crops in it, or it ceases to be organic) isn't damaged by their neighbors. It's analogous with city noise laws: if person A is producing lots of noise at 2 AM, it isn't the responsibility of their neighbors to install soundproofing.

GMO crops by their nature spread their genes to neighboring crops. The organic farmers cannot prevent that (without raising their crops in a bubble, or moving hundreds of miles away). You might say Monsanto can't, either, but since their the ones producing, profiting, and patenting the modified genetic material, it's their responsibility to make sure they don't ruin other peoples business. Or should be, anyways.

The best thing by far is that this ruling should allow farmers to file suit without fear of countersuit just because they are nominally in "possession" of patented seeds that they neither wanted nor took steps to acquire.

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

This has to be one of the single most ignorant comments I've ever seen on Ars. In two sentences you not only manage to contradict yourself you then proceed to lay the blame and the burden on the victim. The burden has always been on the owner to make sure <thing> does no harm to anybody.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

↓ Moderation: (show post)

Then IMO you are an idiot.

Your stance is basically, if someone is spray painting their house, and the wind blows their paint into my eyes and I end up blind, it is my fault for not wearing protective eyewear when I walked out my front door.

This could get very interesting, if farmers that use Monsanto seed get sued for contamination of neighboring fields it will open one big Pandora’s Box, in effect it could make using Monsanto’s seed more costly because of threat of being sued for contamination.

Read the whole article and didn't really find out what it was really about until the last sentence!

"[T]he decision today allows farmers who are contaminated to sue Monsanto and Monsanto's customers for the harm caused by that contamination without fear of a retaliation patent infringement claim against them by Monsanto," stated the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat).

They wanted to get a "get out of jail" card before they they turned around and started suing Monsanto!

Not quite. Read the article again.

They wanted assurance that (in the example above about red paint), that if they paint their house blue, and then Monsanto clients paint their house red, and the red paint is blown on their house, that they are not going to be sued for stealing red paint when they go after Monsanto to make them pay for re-painting their house blue again.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

You're correct in that it's not like aspilling red paintt - it's more akin to a chernobyl spewing contaminants that will exist in the environment for an indefinite period of time.

Just as the operators of nuclear facilities bear the responsibility of preventing the contamination of their neighbors properties, so should the purveyors of GMO products. It's not my responsibility to keep your trash out of my yard - it's YOUR responsibility to not let your trash blow into my yard.

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

and they are going to do that exactly how?

If Monsanto is allowed to pollute other crops - pollen gets blown great distances - and the other growers are forced to stop growing their own crops for fear of litigation/infringement, then Monsanto will have given themselves a monopoly. Even if they are prevented from enforcement, they damage the businesses of others such as Organic farmers.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

Then IMO you are an idiot.

Your stance is basically, if someone is spray painting their house, and the wind blows their paint into my eyes and I end up blind, it is my fault for not wearing protective eyewear when I walked out my front door.

Outside the realm of GMO, many chemical and pharmaceutical companies routinely apply a technique called "directed evolution" to enhance or change certain properties of enzymes derived from microbes, and then use the resulting 'super enzymes' to catalyze reactions in their industrial processes that are either impossible to do with traditional routes, or require huge amounts of dangerous, toxic solvents. If you couldn't patent novel genes, like Monsanto has done here, then we'd be unable to make many products or would hurt the environment by being forced to use these toxic solvents.

You clearly confuse the capability to patent something with the ability to create it. Those are two entirely different things.

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

Or they can just rewrite the standard for "organic". It's blowing smoke up the arses of consumers. Practically all food we eat today is modified through selective cultivation, and organic standards don't necessarily forbid the use of pesticides and fertilizers with scary sounding names. My only concern here would be Monsanto threatening people for having seeds blown in to their fields.

"Organic" farmers are thriving in an uneducated market where consumers neither understand or want to know how their foods get made. That said, it's pretty undesirable to see Monsanto's monoculture in crops.

The statement also suggests that many of the farmers may be interested in filing lawsuits seeking damages over contamination of their lands by Monsanto products, either against Monsanto itself or against neighboring farms.

... what? So they can't be sued for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their. But they can sue others for accidentally getting GMO seed onto their?

How in the hell does that make sense?

This boils down to I can't sue you for stealing my patented red paint if I spill it on you but you can sue me for the cost of clean up if I spill my patented red paint on you.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

and they are going to do that exactly how?

If Monsanto is allowed to pollute other crops - pollen gets blown great distances - and the other growers are forced to stop growing their own crops for fear of litigation/infringement, then Monsanto will have given themselves a monopoly. Even if they are prevented from enforcement, they damage the businesses of others such as Organic farmers.

I think the paint analogy is quite a good one.

organic is a process based label, like Kosher and Halal. It is based on marketing considerations, not safety assessments, so from the FDA's (scientifically derived) perspective GMO and organic seeds are not materially different from each other. The FDA has already stated that as long as an organic farmer has followed the organic process, and not intentionally used non-organic seeds, the accidental contamination from neighboring GMO seeds is not going to get your "certified Organic" status revoked.

As far as the FDA is concerned, soulsabr is correct. The burden of keeping your crops free of GMO falls on the organic seed producer, not on your neighbors who are using a perfectly safe and legal seed on their farm. The organic producers should be doing what any seed grower does, and produce next generations seeds under controlled conditions in a green house, not in an open field where the genetic combination cannot be controlled.

It is important to remember that long before the organic stupidity, seed companies earned their market share by improving performance for year to year. This should not change for organic seed companies. These improvements are achieved through controlled breeding and target mutagenesis. Neither of which can be done in an open field. If these farmers want to forgo seed improvement and save their seeds year after year, or try to somehow improve their stock using completely random pollination, then they will be going out of business soon anyway so are not worth considering. The smart organic producers who do improve their seeds using approved methods will outcompete them and drive them out of business even without the effects of GMO.

This could get very interesting, if farmers that use Monsanto seed get sued for contamination of neighboring fields it will open one big Pandora’s Box, in effect it could make using Monsanto’s seed more costly because of threat of being sued for contamination.

Assuming the organic farmers are able to successfully sue Monsanto for contamination, I suspect the end game will be Monsanto's next generation of plants won't be able to cross breed with naturally occurring ones. This is a good thing.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

You're correct in that it's not like aspilling red paintt - it's more akin to a chernobyl spewing contaminants that will exist in the environment for an indefinite period of time.

Just as the operators of nuclear facilities bear the responsibility of preventing the contamination of their neighbors properties, so should the purveyors of GMO products. It's not my responsibility to keep your trash out of my yard - it's YOUR responsibility to not let your trash blow into my yard.

Actually its WORSE than that because radiation fades over time while genetically altered crops amplify.

This could get very interesting, if farmers that use Monsanto seed get sued for contamination of neighboring fields it will open one big Pandora’s Box, in effect it could make using Monsanto’s seed more costly because of threat of being sued for contamination.

Assuming the organic farmers are able to successfully sue Monsanto for contamination, I suspect the end game will be Monsanto's next generation of plants won't be able to cross breed with naturally occurring ones. This is a good thing.

Sort of. Who knows what the cascade effects could be?

Anyway, what blows my mind is they didn't address the issue of Monsanto trespassing on private property to conduct investigations before filing suit.

Quoting paultherope:"then Monsanto will have given themselves a monopoly"

Seed companies like Monsanto already have a monopoly and it is already difficult to acquire original, non-genetically modified seed stock in many instances. Taking wheat for example, U.S. and Canadian commercial wheat growers have a choice of about 40 hybridized wheat strains to choose from when they plant. There probably is no authentic, un-tampered with wheat seed left in these countries. Some doctor’s point out that the wheat we eat today is genetically different from the wheat of 50 years ago. Crossbred and hybridized wheat grown today is genetically altered to produce more carbohydrates and more yield per acre. The wheat products we consume come with a higher glycemic index and can lead to complications of obesity, increased insulin levels, visceral fat, AGE (Advanced Glycation End products) and diabetes due to excessive carbohydrate intake.

Corn is much the same way. Most remnants of unmodified and fertile corn seeds (DNA) are locked away in seed company research laboratory vaults. Go to the store today to find seeds to plant in your garden and 90% are hybrids - that won't reproduce the next season.

Looks like this article doesn't state what another article on the case did - Monsanto's pledge states that it won't sue for infringement only if 1% or less "contaminated" crop is found. Anything greater than 1%, then Monsanto wants royalties from the farmer whether the farmer used GMO seed intentionally or not, and all bets are off on whether they will sue.

Honestly, this is a horrible precedent (in a string of horrible precedents) set by the courts when it comes to farming/biotech relationships. Hopefully the latest GMO wheat "scandal" will be the wake up call for the FDA, USDA and the US Government as a whole when it comes to Monsanto and other GMO's. But given the state of affairs (read: government hands in corporate pockets) of the government, I down anything will come of it.

It is important to remember that long before the organic stupidity, seed companies earned their market share by improving performance for year to year. This should not change for organic seed companies. These improvements are achieved through controlled breeding and target mutagenesis. Neither of which can be done in an open field. If these farmers want to forgo seed improvement and save their seeds year after year, or try to somehow improve their stock using completely random pollination, then they will be going out of business soon anyway so are not worth considering. The smart organic producers who do improve their seeds using approved methods will outcompete them and drive them out of business even without the effects of GMO.

And before the Monsanto stupidity, farmers had the option of holding back some of their crop to use as seed for next year. With all of the cross contamination of patented seeds, that's not possible.

I don't think this is like that at all, Mosanto isn't dropping their paint (seeds) on anyone. Winds blow, seeds fly around, what do you expect farmers to do? This is like complaining about fundamental physics.

IMO if organic farmers care so much the burden should lie on them to take precautions to not get contaminated.

Then IMO you are an idiot.

Your stance is basically, if someone is spray painting their house, and the wind blows their paint into my eyes and I end up blind, it is my fault for not wearing protective eyewear when I walked out my front door.

Moron.

The analogy is stupid and should be dropped entirely.

First, farmers depend on the pollen from their neighbors to produce corn. Otherwise all of your rows at the up-wind side of a field run the risk of never being pollinated.

Second, paint in your eyes is harmful. While most people are uncertain, the data consistently shows that the currently approved GMO plants are safe.

The GMO seeds are harmful too -- not to human health, but to the financial livelihood of the organic farmer. For an organic farmer, having GMO seed appear in their fields constitutes a real harm.

Hmmm...Should there be a burden on GMO splicers to provide safeguards against spreading of their genes? Or at least some kind of marker to simplify the sorting out of GMO seedstock?

ha, Monsanto's pet congressmen actually slipped a rider into the last spending bill that protects them from gov't review for GMO crop contamination. The activists were calling it the "Monsanto Protection Act."

Sooooooo wrong. No company or individual should be able to patent a naturally existing gene simply by being the first to discover and characterize the gene, sure! But when millions or billions of dollars are put into engineering a protein/enzyme into a form that meets an industrial need, there is no question that the new gene should be and is patentable.

...for 1 generation only, and when market saturation is below 75%. Nobody's tell them not to sell their product, but telling people they can't RE-plant the product as part of the natural cycle of life, is dumb. It's like telling you every time you sell your old VHS tapes, you have to send a check for $2 to the Publisher/Distributor. First sale should apply.

Once everyone calls an adhesive bandage a "band-aid", the trademark is dissolved, since it's too common to NOT associate it. Once seed saturation from any source hit 90%, the court system should have ruled the patent invalid, IMHO.

Outside the realm of GMO, many chemical and pharmaceutical companies routinely apply a technique called "directed evolution" to enhance or change certain properties of enzymes derived from microbes, and then use the resulting 'super enzymes' to catalyze reactions in their industrial processes that are either impossible to do with traditional routes, or require huge amounts of dangerous, toxic solvents. If you couldn't patent novel genes, like Monsanto has done here, then we'd be unable to make many products or would hurt the environment by being forced to use these toxic solvents.

The last group of people you want to financially bully is farmers. They grow your food, and if they stop, sell all that land to put up condos/housing at a huge short-term financial gain, we'd all starve.

CRmarvin42 wrote "No one has ever died or even gotten sick from GMO because of the changed gene."This would be a very difficult claim to prove.In the early years of the last century radium was the hot thing (no pun intended). It was highly touted for a variety of things, sold by trained Physicians etc. That did not turn out so well as a multitude of people died because of something they were promoting that they did not understand. It was however the best science of the day. GMO's are PROBABLY safe but before we dedicate our ENTIRE ecosystem to them I want more safety studies done. Biologic systems are incredibly complex. The caveat of Murphy's law and unintended consequences come to mind.

Quoting paultherope:"then Monsanto will have given themselves a monopoly"

Seed companies like Monsanto already have a monopoly and it is already difficult to acquire original, non-genetically modified seed stock in many instances. Taking wheat for example, U.S. and Canadian commercial wheat growers have a choice of about 40 hybridized wheat strains to choose from when they plant. There probably is no authentic, un-tampered with wheat seed left in these countries. Some doctor’s point out that the wheat we eat today is genetically different from the wheat of 50 years ago. Crossbred and hybridized wheat grown today is genetically altered to produce more carbohydrates and more yield per acre. The wheat products we consume come with a higher glycemic index and can lead to complications of obesity, increased insulin levels, visceral fat, AGE (Advanced Glycation End products) and diabetes due to excessive carbohydrate intake.

Corn is much the same way. Most remnants of unmodified and fertile corn seeds (DNA) are locked away in seed company research laboratory vaults. Go to the store today to find seeds to plant in your garden and 90% are hybrids - that won't reproduce the next season.

No GMO wheat has ever been approved. All issues we may or may not see in wheat genetics come from "traditional" cross breeding and targeted mutagenesis. Which is perfectly compatible with the National Organic List in the US.

No crop produced for human consumption is "un-tampered" as you put it. We've been selectively breeding wheat and other plants for millennia. If there are problems it is precisely because of the uncontrolled nature of traditional techniques. We can use GMO to remove undesirable traits as easily as adding desirable ones while reducing the risk of adverse side effects like those you describe.

Also there are seed banks for preserving varieties that are not economically viable anymore. Universities use and maintain many of them.

Finally, while Monsanto patented terminator seeds, they have never produced a commercial product with the trait. This is one of the anti-GMO FUD talking points and is bullshit.